Converting speech to text can be accomplished currently by several methods. Each method has different levels of accuracy, security, speed, tolerance of poor audio quality and price. Court reporters, or stenographers, for example, provide verbatim transcription but at a high price and with a time delay. Computer-based speech recognition is much less accurate, but is less expensive and instantaneous. Transcription of stored messages (such as voice mail) is more difficult for computer-based speech recognition technology to perform accurately due to poor audio quality. No current speech to text method provides the ideal combination of accuracy, security, speed and tolerance when transcribing general-quality speech.
Linking the speech to text conversion process to an existing communications service, such as a telephone system, makes the conversion simpler to achieve. Local telephone companies offer Call Forward on Busy (“CFB”), Call Forward on No Answer (“CFNA”), Call Forwarding (“CF”), Distinctive Ring and other services. FIG. 1 shows a traditional phone system 1 which may offer the services described above. When a user of the traditional phone system 1 places a call, the system has an Automatic Number Identification (“ANI”) service 10 that identifies the number from which the call has been placed. Similarly, the traditional phone system 1 has a Dialed Number Identification Service (“DNIS”) service 20 which identifies the number that the caller dialed. This information is received by the local phone company 30 and the call is directed to the receiving phone which is termed a Plain Old Telephone Service (“POTS”) device 40.